Further Ado (By Boniface)
Re: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Often, when someone gives a speech the MC begins by saying a few words. In conclusion he sometimes say something like βTherefore, without further ado, I present to you our illustrious speaker, Boniface!β.
But, what if you wanted βfurther adoβ? Youβve come to the right place! So, with investigative coffee cup in hand, let us embark on a little bit of examination.
A reader has asked me to clarify some of the things I mentioned in my previous article.
If God is omnipresent, then how can we have a βGod shaped holeβ? Is he not all-present? Or is there something else?
For clarification, the quote βGod shaped holeβ comes from the writing of Blaise Pascal (famous for Pascalβs Wager and Pascalβs Triangle). In his PensΓ©es where he says:
What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.
Some people use the term differently, but this is what I mean by it.
My answer
Yes, God is omnipresent, or he would not be infinite. But let us assume for a second that he is present in all things to the same degree. That would mean that everything that he created will have the βsame amount of presenceβ, he would be βevenly distributedβ (for lack of a better word). Therefore all things would be equal, since they would have the same amount of everything: God being The Beautiful, The True, and The Good. Everything would be equally good.
But is everything equal? Is hell the same as heaven? Are the good the same as the bad? Are plants, animals, and men all equal? God created them all, but they are not all equal. God is then present in them in βvarying degreesβ, but according to what?
These βvarying degreesβ have a lot to do with free will. Free will is the ability to think or not to think1. Take the example of Adam and Eve: they chose (using their free will) to disobey God, reject what he told them, and eat of the tree. They basically said by their actions that they didnβt need God to tell them what to do, they could be their own gods, telling themselves what was right and wrong. God is a perfect Gentleman: he never stays where he is not wanted, so he left their soul, and did not walk with them, or interact with them in the same way. You see this in the case of Moses; he interacts with God in a deep way, but is not permitted to see his face
And the Lord said, βBehold, there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.2
You can then go through the steps laid out in Anselmβs Why God Became Man dialogue, where he goes through the process of restoring what had been lost through that original sin. That process is the coming of Christ to ransom us from sin and death.
So, God is present inasmuch as we welcome him. It goes back to the quote from First John. But how do we welcome him? Through baptism. That is what gives us βlife in Christβ.
God, then, is present in all things, but not to the same degree. He is present in a tree in a different way than he is present ββ¦where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.β3. If they were the same, there is no point in the words of Jesus in Matthewβs Gospel!
has a response to this question as well:
Not to be confused with freedom, which is the ability to act or not to act. A chained man does not have freedom, but he does have the free will to think, hope, and love, or commit βmental suicideβ.
Sorry for taking so long to sit down and respond to your thoughtful composition. I am very happy to read your words and especially the concept of God's omnipresence existing but to varying degrees. I recently had a discussion with a gnostic pseudo-christian who had maintained this manichean idea that there was an equal existence of evil counter-balancing God and also "spaces" where God could not exist devoid of existence, which my mind sees as an absurdity for obvious reasons.
I was pretty sure that this was not your position, but I very much appreciated how you clarified that.
From my standpoint, despite identifying very closely with Plato and St Augustine foremost of all philosophers, there are divergences that I have with either man. For Plato: I disagree on reincarnation, but everything else is pretty solid, while my views on sin diverge from Augustine's.
In some ways I find myself more in alignment with the early Christian church father Origen- also a Platonist, who didn't agree on the doctrine of original sin in the way that it was embraced by Augustine. The view I share with Origen is that we are born with a divine seed of goodness as our primary impulse, but being interwoven in the lower reality of mater and its finite, limited, bounded properties - we are forever cut off from absolute perfection, goodness etc which only our minds can access intellectually in parts but not all (ie: I can conceptualize the perfect square that cannot be made more perfect but I cannot construct the perfect square which could not be made more perfect). In that sense, nothing created in this domain of bounded finite reality (aka: Plato's realm of "becoming") cannot ever actualize fully in an untainted manner. Hence seductions, impulses that divert us from our proper path will also exist- but to varying degrees which can change immensely over time depending upon the degree of wisdom or folly our choices infuse into our identities.
The terms of wisdom or folly's infusion into our lives, I believe that to be based upon our capacity to exercise humility and our god given conscience tied to our god given powers of reason in order to recognize flaws in our hearts and thinking which results in time in a diminution of the hold of past wrong thoughts and wrong yearnings that remove us from the domain of the higher reality. In that sense "loves" that shouldn't be loved which once occupied me when I was younger (love for drugs, love for cigarettes, loveless sex, television, banal music) are now things which induce me to feel repulsion due to the presence of wisdom which I'd like to think of as the presence of God's love which is the effect of grace.
Other loves that shouldn't be loved like chocolate cake still have a hold and probably always will, but hopefully with lesser power over time. Inversely other not-loves that should be loved (like eating veggies, going to the gym, learning new languages, etc) I hope will grow since they currently are occuring via lower Kantian motives (aka: "musts" rather than willful desires) which is for the future me to hopefully enjoy.
That's about all I can say for the time being, but that's my thought on the essence of sin and God.